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Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.
W. Somerset Maugham
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W. Somerset Maugham
Age: 90 †
Born: 1874
Born: January 1
Died: 1965
Died: January 1
Army Scout
Literary Critic
Novelist
Physician Writer
Playwright
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Paris
France
W. Somerset Maugham
Somerset Maugham
Would
Unnatural
Time
Measures
Determined
Lifetime
Perfection
Periods
Perfect
Shortened
Long
Lifetimes
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I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.
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He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.
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Success. I don't believe it has any effect on me. For one thing I always expected it.
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You can never know enough about your characters
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Art, if it is to be reckoned as one of the great values of life, must teach man humility, tolerance, wisdom and magnanimity. The value of art is not beauty, but right action.
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The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
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The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice
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Words have weight, sound and appearance it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.
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First, cut out all the wisdom, then cut out all the adjectives.
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Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
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The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
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The humorist has a good eye for the humbug he does not always recognize the saint.
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Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
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But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up.
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If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
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There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood.
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What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
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Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. It's a funny thing about life if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
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Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
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Unconsciously, perhaps, we treasure the power we have over people by their regard for our opinion of them, and we hate those upon whom we have no such influence.
W. Somerset Maugham
